Case Number 06561

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

The Charge

"Once in a generation...a motion picture explodes into
greatness!"

Opening Statement

It would be a stretch to call anything that Judgment at Nuremberg does
"exploding." The movie moves at almost a snail's pace. Perhaps the
people who wrote that tagline meant to comment on the fact that a movie on this
topic came out of nowhere and was likely to spark heated conversation. Almost 45
years later, Judgment at Nuremberg still maintains that essential ability
to raise uneasy questions and to make one think. Aiding in that pursuit, MGM has
made it readily available on an inexpensive "special edition" DVD.

Facts of the Case

Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg is a fictionalized account of
the third of the Nuremberg Trials held following World War II. During the trial
in question, Nazi judges and legal officials, here represented by four Nazi
judges, were put on trial for crimes that could be seen as just following the
orders of their government. The four jurists here, Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt
Lancaster, The Leopard, The Crimson Pirate), Emil Hahn (Werner
Klemperer, best known as Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes), Werner Lampe
(Torben Meyer, Sullivan's Travels), and Friedrich Hofstetter (Martin
Brandt, The Devil at 4 O'clock), are put on trial before a panel of
judges headed by an American, Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy, It's a Mad, Mad,
Mad, Mad World). After an impassioned battle between prosecutor Colonel Tad
Lawson (Richard Widmark, Pickup on South Street) and defense attorney
Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell, Little Odessa), the defendants are found,
predictably, guilty of their crimes.

The Evidence

Judgment at Nuremberg is certainly a star-studded affair. In addition
to the stars and well-respected character actors already mentioned, Judy
Garland, Marlene Dietrich, and Montgomery Clift all appear as witnesses in this
film, and William Shatner can be seen in one of his few pre-Star Trek
film roles. Despite the star power, one is not often distracted by the film's
performances. While this may sound almost negative, it is, in fact, a great
compliment.

Certainly one gets caught up in the emotion of Hans Rolfe's passionate
defenses of his clients and countrymen, and in the heartache of the stories of
the witnesses whose lives were ruined by these judges. But looking back at this
film almost a half century after the fact, there are so many actors in this film
who are almost inexorably linked in the public consciousness with one character
that it could easily derail the film. It is a testament to their performances
that it does not. Judy Garland may forever be Dorothy Gale; Werner Klemperer,
Colonel Klink; and William Shatner, Captain Kirk; but here they are Irene
Hoffman, Emil Hahn, and Captain Harrison Byers, and you never doubt it. Nor do
you question the other performances, the other characters. Only Burt Lancaster
makes you wince momentarily, when he comes into view made up to look a quarter
century older than he was.

The performances do what they should. They give life to the script, but
allow you to focus on it and on the characters rather than on the actors who are
playing them. It seems almost a fundamental goal of "good acting," but
as public standards and ideas are constantly in flux, it's good to know that
these performances still measure up.

As far as the script itself, it is as much about ethics and morals as it is
about the crimes that the Nazis perpetrated. The central questions are not
whether what the Nazis did was right or wrong, but rather of moral relativism.
They are questions that are perpetually raised by thinking people in times of
conflict: Who decides what is right and what is wrong? Who decides what killing
is okay and what killing isn't? Who decides when one is no longer patriotically
supporting one's own government and is, instead, committing crimes against
humanity? The cynical answer is, of course, "the victor." The real
answer is more nuanced and more intangible than that.

Hitler's slaughter of innocent human beings was wrong. Most would agree that
that is the case in absolute terms, and I'm convinced that had Hitler won
World War II, his actions still would have been wrong. If, however, the United
States had lost some of the wars it has fought, using some of the tactics it has
employed, would its actions have been right? Are they right, or is our
view of ourselves just relativistic morality at work? The question more directly
raised by Judgment at Nuremberg is this: What responsibility do citizens
bear for the past actions of their government and for their complicity, active
or passive, in the morally bankrupt actions of a government that was, at the
time, their legal authority?

Further complicating matters is the case of Dr. Ernst Janning, a renowned
ethicist who kept his position on the bench despite being fully aware of the
Nazis' moral failings. His defense is that by keeping his authority as a judge
he was in a better position to temper the extremism of the Nazi party; if he had
resigned, surely the Nazi party would have given his position to someone more
amenable to their plans and without his scruples. What excuse is this, though,
for Janning's swearing allegiance to the Nazi party? For his Nazi-appeasing
judgments against innocent people?

These questions sit at the heart of Judgment at Nuremberg, yet for
the viewer they remain unanswered. They are, perhaps, unanswerable. Judge Dan
Haywood resolves them the best he can in deciding the fate of the four men on
trial in his court. Through the careful consideration of testimony, arguments,
facts, and stories, Haywood concludes that it is the responsibility of judges to
be moral standard-bearers. They should not be reflexively responsive to
political pressures, but instead should protect the rights of the people they
serve -- not just the politically given rights, but the absolute rights as well.
As judges, the defendants sitting before him knew this, yet they failed to live
up to their obligations.

MGM more than meets expectations with the disc it delivers here. Both the
video and the audio are excellent. The picture is presented in its original
black and white widescreen, and it is pretty. The film is nearly fifty years
old, but the image is clear and sharp and free of distracting defects. The only
obvious blemish is a lack of anamorphic enhancement, which seems to be MGM's
standard for films that are "close enough" to full frame.

The audio is similarly above par. This film is wholly dialogue-driven, and
the courtroom drama comes across loud and clear. The stresses of age can be
heard every once in a while in the thinness of the louder sections of the sparse
musical score, but in all, it's a stellar presentation. Perhaps as a selling
point, MGM has opted to also provide a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix in
addition to the original mono. The surrounds are put to little good use here, as
this is primarily a quiet, courtroom drama. Most of the noticeable differences
come in the form of directional dialogue.

The extras are by no means exhaustive, but they are interesting and
relevant. First up is a twenty-minute video called In Conversation: Abby Mann
and Maximilian Schell, which reunites the two actors to talk about the
project. After they get past stroking each other's egos, the conversation is
actually quite engaging. There is a lot of talk about the previous incarnations
of Judgment at Nuremberg, as part of the TV series Playhouse 90
and as a Broadway production. as well as tidbits about the creation of the
film.

The Value of a Single Human Being follows. Its six minutes begin with
Abby Mann reading Judge Haywood's opinion for the case from the film, but it's
primarily composed of writer Mann's reflections on what he imagines to be the
motivations of people like the Nazi judges in the film. He also comments on what
he considers the normalcy and the basic humanity of the judges. Mann believes
that this sort of moral failing could easily happen to most, and he blames
patriotism as its evil root.

The last mini-documentary is a 15-minute Tribute to Stanley Kramer.
This is essentially a brief overview of Kramer's life and, to some extent, his
filmography, with comments and discussion by Kramer's widow, Karen Sharpe
Kramer, and writer Abby Mann. A lot of time is spent on how Kramer and his wife
met and on his years in the business. One of the most interesting discussions is
of how films of Holocaust victims from Dachau affected Kramer. He would
ultimately include some of this footage in Judgment at Nuremberg, making
it the first Hollywood film to include actual footage from concentration
camps.

Also included are a photo gallery and the original theatrical trailer. Both
are more interesting than the extras of their type that are generally included
on DVD releases. The photo gallery is smartly divided into subsections, with
each theme getting between 11 and 60 photos. The categories included are
"Costume Design," "Set Design," "On Location,"
"Stanley Kramer at Work," and "Premiere in Berlin."
"Stanley Kramer at Work" may have been more aptly titled "Stanley
Kramer and His Cast at Work," as Kramer does not begin to regularly appear
in the photos until the second half of the sixty photos in this section, but
most of the collections are an interesting study of their topic. The focus of
the subsections is a great strength and gives them an appeal beyond that of a
random collection of pictures.

The trailer is interesting historically. It is overwrought, and tries,
again, to inject peoples' thoughts of the film with explosions and physical
action, though there is little of this in the film itself. Sure, it's
metaphoric, but the trailer is misleading. The trailer is also of interest
because a majority of its running time is spent showing clips of the film's six
top-billed actors. Tracy, Lancaster, Widmark, Dietrich, Schell, Garland, and
Clift are all featured in specific sections of the trailer, which leaves one
knowing that this is how the film was sold. It is likely that touting the film's
star-studded cast was the easiest -- or the only -- way to get people in the
door. It is, again, a bit misleading, as the stars are not the focus of this
show; this is an ensemble drama at its core. Still, a trailer of this sort is
understandable if only because not taking advantage of the big names in this
film would almost have been negligent.

MGM's supplements and presentation are, for the most part, worthy of a film
of this stature. There is certainly room for a lot more in the way of historical
context for a film like this, and some of the extras are a little light, but
almost everything on this disc has some merit. The one exception is an
"extra" not yet discussed: a still photo of three MGM DVD cases billed
as "More Great MGM Releases."

The Rebuttal Witnesses

This is a long film. It clocks in at over three hours, and sitting
down to watch it seems like a daunting task. Stanley Kramer's decisions to favor
deliberate pacing, static scenes, and details like getting the witnesses to and
from the witness stand all combine to make the film seem longer. In my opinion,
this length is easily overshadowed and quickly forgotten as one gets wrapped up
in the story. Still, its length is certainly a factor if one doesn't have three
hours to spare.

The other, more serious accusation often leveled at this film is that its
story is bleeding-heart, anti-American liberalism. This is a harder criticism to
discuss -- because, as is always the case, people will be able to see whatever
bias they want to see in media. At the end of the film, defense attorney Hans
Rolfe does compare the guilt of American industrialists who profited from
Hitler's rebuilding of Germany in the 1930s to the guilt of the Nazi judges.
While this may be overstatement, or even slightly biased, its intention does not
seem to be to condemn America, but rather to force the viewer to step back and
look at the bigger picture -- to consider the implications of the judgment of
the German people at large.

The film is far from apolitical, but most are aware of that before the
start.

Closing Statement

One of the greatest ironies of Judgment at Nuremberg is that the men
who sit in judgment of four German citizens, whose crimes' basic source was
bowing to political pressure, are under constant political pressure themselves
to downplay the guilt of the Nazis on trial. It is the Cold War, and Germany is
a geographical ally. To the US, making these men pay for their crimes is not as
important as protecting a burgeoning relationship with Germany. To governments,
morality is not important; preservation of the intangible "State"
is.

Judgment at Nuremberg tells its tale masterfully. It is full of
numerous memorable performances and one Oscar-winner; Maximilian Schell won the
Best Actor Oscar over Spencer Tracy in 1961, supposedly the lowest-billed actor
ever to do so. It raises questions that continue to make those who watch it
think. It is a classic film that surely deserves its classic status. Don't pass
up an opportunity to see it. At the price you can find it online, it's a
steal.

The Verdict

All those associated with the film -- Nazi judges excluded -- are free to go.
MGM is advised to reconsider its selective policies regarding anamorphic
transfers, but is commended for providing such a solid disc so cheaply. Court is
adjourned!